Bay Bulls → Bay Bulls

The Irish Loop

Drive time: 4h 18m
Distance: 266.3 km
Routes: 10 · 90 · 1 · 13

Conservative model estimate, Bay Bulls to Bay Bulls — no stops, dry roads. Many of Newfoundland's provincial routes carry no speed limit in the open map data, so the router assumes a slow default: a driver who knows the road will beat this. Source: OSRM driving profile, Bay Bulls round by Ferryland, Trepassey, St Vincent's and Salmonier and back, checked 2026-09-08.

Drive it with your own nav:Organic Maps →OsmAnd →Apple →Google →Waze →The first two run on OpenStreetMap and don't track you — the same map this site is built from.

Or take the whole route with you: Download the GPX → — the measured drive plus every stop as a waypoint, for Organic Maps, OsmAnd or any Garmin, no account and no signal needed once it's on the device.

No one has sent a recording of this drive yet.Be the first — send the track →

The province names this drive, which is the only reason it has a page: routes here end at places, and a loop ends where it began. What earns it one is that the Irish Loop is a named provincial touring route with published road numbers, not a shape somebody drew on a map.

Measured as a circuit it is 266.3 km — Route 10 south from Bay Bulls along the shore to Trepassey, west and north through the barrens, Route 90 up the Salmonier Line, and the Trans-Canada and Route 13 closing it. Four and a quarter hours of driving, and every one of the reasons to make it takes longer than the driving between them.

Driving route from Bay Bulls to Bay Bulls: 266.3 km, about 4h 18m, via Routes 10 · 90 · 1 · 13.Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. Tiles by OpenFreeMap. Route line computed with OSRM.

Worth stopping for

Father Duffy's Well Provincial Park
A roadside spring directly on the line the drive follows, named for Father James Duffy, the Irish priest appointed first parish priest of St. Mary's in 1834. The Knights of Columbus turned the site into a roadside grotto in the 1930s. ParksNL classes it as day use; it is a stop measured in minutes, not hours.
Stopping here adds about 0 min and 0 km to the drive.
navigate: Organic · OsmAnd · Apple · Google · Waze
Salmonier Nature Park
Run by the province's wildlife division on the Salmonier Line, open to the public since 1978 — established as an environmental education centre rather than a tourist destination, in its own account. The animals live in large natural enclosures along a boardwalk trail, and most of them arrived injured and unreleasable. Its visiting times are the park's to state, not this page's.
Stopping here adds about 0 min and 0 km to the drive.
navigate: Organic · OsmAnd · Apple · Google · Waze

What has been recorded near here

Species reported within 50 km of Bay Bulls and shared to GBIF, the international record of species occurrences. The useful column is when — the months the reports cluster in.

Northern gannetseabirdMorus bassanusReports cluster in July, June, August5,467 reports on record
Atlantic puffinseabirdFratercula arcticaReports cluster in July, August, June4,476 reports on record
Humpback whalewhaleMegaptera novaeangliaeReports cluster in July, August, June3,521 reports on record
Minke whalewhaleBalaenoptera acutorostrataReports cluster in July, June, August81 reports on record
Fin whalewhaleBalaenoptera physalusReports cluster in July, June, May29 reports on record

What this is not

Not how many there are. A report means somebody looked, saw and wrote it down. A busy harbour with tour boats reports more than an empty coast with the same animals in it.
Not a sighting you are promised. Nothing here says you will see one.
Not complete. Only species we ask GBIF about appear, and only where somebody reported them.

From GBIF, queried 2026-09-14 — their record, not a copy of it.

When you get to Bay Bulls

Where to eat in Bay Bulls → — 9 places the open map records, alphabetically, with addresses and phone numbers.

Doing it electric

Fast chargers on this drive: Fermeuse km 59, Trepassey km 117, St. Mary’s km 172
Longest stretch without one: 94 km; St. Mary’s → Bay Bulls, of 266 km driven
Nearest fast charger to Bay Bulls: 25.8 km; 26 min by road, at St. John’s

Source: NL Hydro's published fast-charging network map, exported 2026-09-13 — sites within 3 km of this route's measured line, the km read along it, the drive to the nearest site priced by OSRM. NL Hydro lists these as 62.5 kW DC with CCS and CHAdeMO plugs on a ChargePoint account; whether one is free or working right now is the app's to say. Level 2 chargers in towns are not counted.

Every route compared →NL Hydro: plan your road trip →

Paved or not, per the map

Mapped as unpaved: 0.4 km; an residential road (0.06 km, 33 km from Bay Bulls); an residential road (0.33 km, 33.1 km from Bay Bulls)
Mapped as paved: 24%; 59.2 km of 266.3 km driven
No surface tag on the map: 76%; 187 km the map does not describe either way

Why it matters: Hertz Canada’s published rental terms — the one set of Canadian rental terms we could read in full, quoted not recommended — list “use off paved roads or on roads which are not regularly maintained” as misconduct that voids the damage waiver. Read the agreement you sign before leaving the lot. The terms themselves. Source for these figures: OSRM driving profile, stored route query, with node annotations; OpenStreetMap surface tags via Overpass, checked 2026-09-08. A road with no tag is unknown, not paved; what any road is like today is on 511.

Eating on the way — measured, not recommended

10 places to eat that the open map data records within 2 km of this drive, in the order you would pass them. No stars, no prices, no opinions, and no opening hours — distance along the road is the one thing measured here that a directory cannot give you.

The longest stretch with nothing mapped on it is 91.7 km — after Celtic Knot Pub and Restaurant, until Tim Hortons. That is the figure worth planning around.

The Captain's Tablerestaurantkm 6.6
Riverside Restaurant and Loungerestaurantkm 34.2
Bernard Kavanagh's Restaurantrestaurantkm 44
Lighthouse Picnicsrestaurantkm 45.6
In Da Loop Restaurant & Pubpubkm 58.8
Brophy's Convenience Plus (Jerome's)restaurantkm 59.4
Trepassey Motel & Restaurantrestaurantkm 116.1
Earhart Pubpubkm 116.1
Celtic Knot Pub and Restaurantrestaurantkm 171.1
Tim Hortonscafékm 262.8

What this list is not

Not a recommendation. Nothing here is endorsed, reviewed or rated. It is in the order you drive past it.
Not complete. Somewhere unmapped does not appear. This is never "all of them".
Not open hours. We publish none, because the open data holds none. Never assume a kitchen is serving.
Not necessarily still trading. A place that closed stays in the data until somebody removes it.
Not for sale. No one can pay to appear here, to rank higher, or to have a rival removed.

Open map data is incomplete — somewhere unmapped does not appear here, and this is never "all of them" or "the good ones". A place that closed is also still on the map until somebody removes it, which is why no hours are shown and nothing here says a kitchen is open. From OpenStreetMap and Overture Maps (which includes data from Meta, Foursquare and AllThePlaces); swept 2026-09-12. Map the one that is missing → and every site built on the open map gains it, this one included.

Before you go

These change. We link the people who keep them current rather than copying numbers that go stale here.

Witless Bay Ecological ReserveBoat tours run in the warmer months — operators publish their own dates
The reserve's seabird colonies and the whales that follow the capelin inshore are the reason much of the traffic on Route 10 exists. The reserve is provincial; the boats are private operators with their own seasons and their own weather calls. Neither is this page's to schedule.
Check it now →
MooseYear round, worst between dusk and dawn
The province states the likelihood of injury in a moose collision is twice as high between dusk and dawn as in daytime. This is a four-hour circuit before you stop for anything, and the southern Avalon stretches are unlit two-lane road — a loop begun late in the day finishes in exactly the wrong conditions.
Check it now →
Road conditionsYear round, matters most November–April
Fog is the Avalon's own weather and it does not wait for winter. Route 10 down the coast and Route 90 back through the barrens are single carriageway for their whole length, and there is no parallel road for either.
Check it now →

The trails

Questions people actually ask

How long is the Irish Loop?＋

Measured here as a circuit from Bay Bulls through Ferryland, Trepassey, St Vincent's and Salmonier and back: 266.3 km and about 4 hours 18 minutes of driving, on the OSRM driving profile, before you stop for anything at all. Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, which names the drive, gives it as about 312 km — a longer figure because it is a different circuit, starting at the Salmonier Line or Bay Bulls and taking in more of Route 90's length than the line measured here. Both numbers are honest; they are answers to slightly different questions.

Which way round should I drive it?＋

This page measures it anticlockwise — south from Bay Bulls down Route 10, west along the shore, then north up Route 90 and back. It measures the same either way, so the direction is a preference rather than a saving. The argument for anticlockwise is that the coast comes first, while you are still fresh for it.

Can it be done in a day?＋

The driving can: four and a quarter hours is a comfortable day with room for stops. Whether it should be is another matter — the boat tours at Witless Bay, the archaeology at Ferryland and the guided hike at Mistaken Point are each half a day on their own, and the loop passes all three. As a drive it is a day; as a place it is longer.

Do I need to start at Bay Bulls?＋

No. A loop has no beginning — Bay Bulls is simply where this measurement opens and closes, chosen because the province names it as one of the two ways in. Starting anywhere on the circuit gives the same distance.

Put this map on your site

If you run a place to stay, a tour, or a town page along this drive, this map answers the question your guests already email you: how far are you from the airport? Free, no account, and the measured figures stay current because they are ours to maintain.

<iframe src="https://fromtheairport.xyz/embed/irish-loop"
  width="100%" height="420" style="border:0" loading="lazy"
  title="Driving route: Bay Bulls to Bay Bulls"></iframe>

Add ?lat=&lon=&label= to the URL to pin your own property on the map.

Every distance, drive time and coordinate on this page was checked against its source on September 8, 2026. Origin: OpenStreetMap node/1389879936. Destination: OpenStreetMap node/1389879936.